County open house on Foley Boulevard project

A second open house has been scheduled by the Anoka County Highway Department on its project of reconstruct a segment of Foley Boulevard from 101st Avenue to Egret Boulevard.

The information meeting will take place at the Coon Rapids City Center Monday, Feb. 11, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

No formal presentation will be made. Instead, Anoka County and city of Coon Rapids staff will be available to receive input from affected residents and answer questions.

A prior open house for the project took place in August 2012.

Right now, this segment of Foley has two lanes in each direction, no medians, access from all residential side streets and carries a high volume of traffic.

“There is so much access and that causes all the crashes,” said Anoka County Highway Engineer Doug Fischer.

The project, which is scheduled to take place in 2014, will involve construction of a four-lane section with dedicated left- and right-turn lanes and a center median.

In addition, the existing traffic signals on Foley at the 101st Avenue and Egret Boulevard intersections will be replaced, shoulders will be added, there will be curb and gutter installed, storm sewer work, retaining walls will be built where needed, filing in a sidewalk and construction of a trail.

The county has received federal funding totaling $2.2 million for the project, which has an estimated cost of $3 million, according to Tim Himmer, city public works director.

The balance will come from the county, $675,000, and the city, $115,000, which will come from the city’s state aid street account, Himmer wrote in a report to the council.

But access from some of the side streets will be eliminated.

According to the proposed joint powers agreement between the county and the city, which spells out the scope of the project and the cost sharing, there will be full access intersections on Foley at 101st Avenue (traffic signal), 102nd Lane (side street stop control), 105th Avenue (side street stop control) and at Egret (traffic signal).

But the other existing intersections of the residential streets with Foley will be limited or eliminated completely.

• Foley and 102nd Avenue: right-in and right-out only.

• Foley and 103rd Avenue: no access.

• Foley and 104th Avenue: right-in and right-out only.

• Foley and 104th Lane: no access.

• Foley and 105th Lane: right-in and right-out only on the east leg and closed on the west leg of the intersection.

• Foley and 106th Avenue: no access.

According to the Curt Kobilarcsik, county engineering project manager, a bituminous trail will be constructed on the east side of Foley, while the existing sidewalk on the west side of Foley will be filled in where there are currently gaps.

The project will mean the taking of three homes on east side of Foley because they are very close to the road, which will be widened in some places for turn lanes, Kobilarcsik said.

The property owners affected have been notified, he sad.

During construction, two lanes of traffic will remain open to traffic on Foley from 101st to Egret and it will always be open to local traffic.

Final design on the project is expected to be completed this coming spring with construction earmarked for 2014.

The county has also received federal funding for a project to reconstruct Foley from Egret to Northdale boulevards.

Plans are to reconstruct this segment of Foley in 2015, according to Fischer.

“We are very happy to get federal money for the second half of the project on Foley,” Fischer said.

This project will be more extensive because Foley is currently a single lane in each direction from Egret to Northdale and the upgrade would be to two lanes in each direction with a median that would limit access from residential streets, he said.

In addition, plans are to reconfigure and straighten out the Foley and Northdale boulevards intersection, he said.

“These projects will make Foley much safer,” Fischer said.

According to Fischer, reconstruction of Foley from Highway 10 to Northdale was split into two “because it never did score well” for federal funding as one project.